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The Paine of settler colonialism: Anthony Dean Rizzuto, ‘Paine and Race: Ideologies of Racial Liberalism and Settler Colonialism in the Founding of the United States’, Early American Studies, 23, 2, 2025, pp. 177-214

29Apr25

Abstract: Thomas Paine has long been heralded as a voice of universal egalitarianism. That representation proceeds from wishful misattributions of antislavery writings and concerted misreadings of the existing archive that continue to this day. Building on insights from critical race theory, Black Marxism, settler colonial theory, and Indigenous studies, this article reveals a consistent pattern of white supremacy in Paine’s published writings. It argues that the emerging Republic defined itself as foundationally white against Black and Indigenous others, and that Thomas Paine was instrumental in this process. The article begins by delineating the systematic scholarly misrepresentation of Paine on the subject of race. It then provides a brief overview of his career in a transatlantic eighteenth-century frame, and proceeds to a radically new reading of Common Sense. It culminates with a reinterpretation of the racial ideology of Paine’s archive. A coda considers the significance of this argument in the current conjuncture.


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The settler art of anthropology: Martin Crevier, ‘Anthropology and Settler Nationalisms in the Art of Emily Carr, Irma Stern, and Margaret Preston’, The Journao of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2025

29Apr25

Abstract: South African Irma Stern (1894–1966), Canadian Emily Carr (1871–1945), and Australian Margaret Preston (1875–1963) all attained iconic status as artists in their respective countries. Early appraisers commended their incorporation of Indigenous and Black peoples in a national modernist canon through the use of post-impressionistic sensibilities. Despite notable similarities in biography, vision and oeuvre, these three artists have yet to be considered together in a comparative and connected mode. This article links their careers, ideas and concomitant emergence by focusing on their common and concurrent engagement with the science of Anthropology. All three absorbed and shared anthropologically-inflected conceptions of the ‘Other’. By distilling Anthropology’s discourses for popular audiences, they served as transmission belts between science and the public. They spread theories of racial typologies, of degeneration, of culture and of Indigenous disappearance. Modern art, via Anthropology, thus served as an interface through which Indigenous populations were appropriated and incorporated within nationalisms across Britain’s empire of settlement.


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Capitalising on settler colonialism in Palestine: Amir Reicher, ‘The settler-colonial ethical outlook in the West Bank settlement project: Or, how a settler-colony fell apart when money entered the frontier’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 15, 1, 2025, pp. 146-160

29Apr25

Abstract: Applying an anthropology of ethics approach to the study of settler-colonialism, this article discloses the settler-colonial ethical outlook that animates the most activist circles in West Bank settlement society. By “settler-colonial ethical outlook” I mean the set of proper and improper motivations for appropriating land (according to the settlers). Such an analysis reveals how in the West Bank settlement project, making a profit from the land is taboo—a taboo that, against the backdrop of the rise in land value, came to haunt a community of settlers and eventually led to its implosion when settlers holding two distinct ethical frameworks (deontological vs. ethics of the “good life”) turned against each other. Tracing this case of “moral breakdown” within the ethical outlook of settler-colonizers, this article shows how in the case of the West Bank settlement project, for-profit imaginations and capitalism more broadly sit in an uneasy relationship with settler colonial expansion.


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On the racing of settler colonialism in Palestine: Shaira Vadasaria, ‘The Racial Question of Palestine and the Question of Anti-Racism in Palestine’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2025

29Apr25

Abstract: The persistence of race thinking and racial violence toward Palestinians is inextricably linked to a century-long imperial and settler-colonial project. Yet, state-centered conceptions of anti-racism have seldom been the formative grammar upon which Palestinian sovereignty struggles are waged. Inspired by pedagogical encounters teaching critical race studies in Palestine, the author asks: What do divergent traditions of racial critique open to analytically, and what do they foreclose, in our understandings of decolonial liberation struggles in and for Palestine? What does Palestine’s decolonial liberation struggle and anti-racist legacy instruct scholars of race to center in our understanding of anti-racism? Thinking through her former students’ ambivalence around liberal conceptions of anti-racism as the vehicle toward achieving anti-colonial justice within a settler state, she argues that paying attention to how ideas about racism and anti-racism get registered and stacked within the wider legacy of anti-imperial and anti-colonial critique from Palestine invites a rethinking of the relevance of state-centered liberal approaches to anti-racism for Palestine’s land-based liberation struggle.


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North of settler colonialism: Julia Christensen, Rebecca Hall, ‘Welfare Colonialism and Resource Colonialism in Northern Canada’, in Daniel Béland et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Social Policy in Canada, Oxford University Press, in progress

29Apr25

Abstract: Northern Canada, like the rest of Canada, is a space established and reproduced through processes of settler colonialism. With a focus on the Northwest Territories, this piece examines the relationship between two arenas of dispossession: welfare colonialism and resource colonialism. While these two branches of colonialism are often articulated as distinct, we ask, how has welfare—in its colonial form—been both shaped by and shaped for resource colonialism? In other words, how does welfare colonialism create the conditions for resource colonialism, and how, in turn, does resource colonialism reproduce processes of dispossession and differentiation that create the “need” for settler welfare? This relationship is illustrated through an analysis of northern housing policy. Through an examination of settler housing policy, first, in historical context, and second, in relation to contemporary resource extraction, this chapter traces its impact on Indigenous homemaking and, indeed, Indigenous lifemaking. By framing homemaking as Indigenous lifemaking, this piece situates homespaces in the context of Indigenous struggles for self-determination.


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The racing of settler colonialism: Laura Pulido, ‘Geographies of Race and Ethnicity III: Settler Colonialism and Nonnative People of Color’, in Lori Gallegos, Manuel Vargas, Francisco Gallegos (eds), The Latinx Philosophy Reader, Routledge, 2025

29Apr25

Abstract: Settler colonialism has become an increasingly important concept over the past decade, and while geographers typically think about it from a white/native perspective, I explore how ethnic studies, specifically, Chicana/o studies, has responded to it. For different reasons both disciplines have hesitated to fully interrogate the significance of the concept. In the case of geography, the whiteness of the discipline has caused it to overlook vibrant debates within ethnic studies. Chicana/o studies has not directly engaged with settler colonialism because, I argue, it has the potential to disrupt core elements of Chicana/o political subjectivity. Specifically, it unsettles Chicanas/os’ conception of themselves as colonized people by highlighting their role as colonizers. Acknowledging such a role is difficult not only because it challenges key dimensions of Chicana/o identity, as seen in Aztlán, Chicanas/os’ mythical homeland, but also because of the precarious nature of Chicana/o indigeneity. Examining Chicana/o studies’ muted response to settler colonialism illustrates the impoverished nature of geography’s study of race.


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The reconciliation laboratory? Joseph Gazing Wolf, Ellen Simmons, Paulette Blanchard, Lydia L Jennings, Danielle D Ignace, Dominique M David-Chavez, Deondre Smiles, Michelle Montgomery, Ruth Plenty Sweetgrass-She Kills, Melissa K Nelson, Diana Doan-Crider, Linda Black Elk, Luke Black Elk, Gwen Bridge, Ann Marie Chischilly, Kevin Deer, Kathy DeerinWater, Trudy Ecoffey, Judith Vergun, Daniel Wildcat, James Rattling Leaf, ‘A path to reconciliation between Indigenous and settler–colonial epistemologies’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2025

29Apr25

Abstract: There is a movement across settler–colonial institutions of education and research to engage with Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges. Many settler and Indigenous governments are pursuing pathways to move forward together to address global problems such as climate change. However, given the pervasive history of exploitation and displacement of Indigenous communities, this development has caused some concern among Indigenous leaders and scholars. At the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in Montreal, Canada, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the ESA hosted a 2-day workshop. This gathering of 21 Indigenous environmental scientists included scholars from across the career and professional spectrum. By consensus, workshop participants identified three emergent themes—Engage, Heal, and Reconcile—that provide a pathway toward reconciliation between Indigenous and settler–colonial ways of knowing. This path allows for an ever-greater sharing of institutional resources and power toward a co-equal interfacing of Indigenous Knowledges and settler science.


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The laboratory of settler colonialism: Anna Johnston, The Antipodean Laboratory: Making Colonial Knowledge, 1770–1870, Cambridge University Press, 2023

29Apr25

Description: In this compelling study, Anna Johnston shows how colonial knowledge from Australia influenced global thinking about convicts, natural history and humanitarian concerns about Indigenous peoples. These were fascinating topics for British readers, and influenced government policies in fields such as prison reform, the history of science, and humanitarian and religious campaigns. Using a rich variety of sources including natural history and botanical illustrations, voyage accounts, language studies, Victorian literature and convict memoirs, this multi-disciplinary account charts how new ways of identifying, classifying, analysing and controlling ideas, populations, and environments were forged and circulated between colonies and through metropolitan centres. They were also underpinned by cultural exchanges between European and Indigenous interlocutors and knowledge systems. Johnston shows how colonial ideas were disseminated through a global network of correspondence and print culture.


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A settler colonial outer space: Carla Ibled, ‘Star Wars: Why the Left Should Protect the Status of Space as Humanity’s Commons’, Common-Wealth.org, 24/04/25

28Apr25

Excerpt: Space is one of the few remaining commons of humanity protected by international law, thanks to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Outer space is a rare case where a legal and institutional infrastructure of common ownership and commoning of resources already exists. Today, this status of space is under threat. It is increasingly eroded by the pressure of lobbying corporate powers and their institutional and ideological supports, who are pushing to export the structures of ownership that currently exist on Earth to outer space. Why should the left fight to protect the common ownership status of space? This scene-setting report goes back to the New Space lobby’s attack on international space legislation to open a larger debate on how space can be developed in ways that guarantee shared prosperity and the flourishing of all people and future generations.  


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Settler colonialism embedded: Hung-Peng Lin,Emiko Tajima, Karina Walters, Marilee Sherry, ‘“Erased in Translation”: Decoding Settler Colonialism Embedded in Cultural Adaptations to Family Group Conferencing (FGC)’, Social Sciences, 2025

28Apr25

Abstract: Māori wisdom revolutionized the child welfare system through the now manualized Family Group Conferencing method. The global trend of adopting and adapting this culturally grounded child welfare practice has been well documented. However, as this service model is adapted and imported to other countries, so is its legacy of settler colonialism. This qualitative case study applies Settler Colonialism Theory to unpack the settler colonialism embedded in the process of adopting an adapted Indigenist family engagement program in Taiwan. Research findings indicate that cultural adaptation reproduces settler colonialism. To implement family engagement within a paternalistic CPS system, program implementers struggled between authoritative decision making and building meaningful state–family partnerships. Although adhering to a model that ostensibly involves family decision making may ease settler anxiety among program implementers, settler colonialism remains the elephant in the room. It frequently undergirds the cultural adaptation process. Liberatory social work practice calls for unpacking settler anxiety, systems of power, and cultural imperialism embedded in program implementation.


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